Gore's Privileged Gun Class

Government employees aren't superior to the governed.

National Review Online.
10/31/00 12:40 p.m. More by Kopel on the gun issue in the 2000 election.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Most, but not all, of this text is based on an
article done by Dave Kopel for the September issue of Chronicles.

The Clinton/Gore White House
Interdepartmental Working Group proposed a
massive new plan to turn the right to bear arms into a
government-granted privilege to own a limited selection of sporting
guns,
as I detailed in a previous NRO column. During the Democratic
presidential primaries, Gore ran television commercials which flashed
an article I wrote ("Gun
Shows Under Attack") while Gore bragged about "standing up to the
gun lobby." Yet now that gun owners in swing states are turning
against Gore, his union allies are telling their rank-and-file that
Gore is really and truly pro-gun.

But that all depends on what the meaning of "pro-gun" is. If "pro-gun"
means respecting the fundamental human right to self-defense, Gore is
an energetic opponent. Gore may claim that he won't confiscate hunting
rifles, but he certainly does want to make it illegal for people who
don't work for the government to protect themselves in public places.

Speaking in Atlanta this May, Al Gore joined the National Rifle
Association and numerous police unions in supporting federal
legislation to override state laws regulating the concealed carrying
of handguns. Many states do not allow out-of-state, off-duty police
officers to carry handguns. The vice president wants to force
communities to allow non-resident, off-duty visitors, who happen to be
police officers in their home state, to carry a concealed weapon.

In
contrast,
Gore's position paper on "Gun Violence" claims that "Al Gore will
oppose efforts to loosen existing limits on concealed weapons."
Presumably, this means that a future President Gore would sign Sen.
Frank Lautenberg's bill to eliminate the laws in 31 states that allow
law-abiding citizens to obtain permits to carry handguns for lawful
protection, provided they pass a background check.

States would lose decision-making power under both proposals: Gore
wants to stop states from allowing ordinary citizens to carry guns,
and to compel states to allow non-resident, off-duty police officers
to carry guns.

Gore's double standard prevails throughout the anti-gun movement. It's
virtually impossible to find a gun-control law or proposal that
doesn't have a police exemption. Gore and others claim that "assault
weapons" are useful only for killing a lot of innocent people quickly,
but the police can possess them. "Junk guns" are called unreliable and
worthless for protection, but the police can use them. Gun locks and
other technology mandates are not supposed to impede defensive gun
use, but police guns are exempt.

One justification for all these exemptions is that the police have
special obligations to protect society and are, therefore, entitled to
possess superior force. But no one would suggest that police officers
should be allowed to carry nerve gas, surface-to-air missiles,
grenades, or mortars. Even if we assume that police officers are the
only legitimate protectors of society, they should not necessarily be
entitled to possess firearms which are forbidden to other citizens,
especially those which are forbidden because they supposedly have no
protective value.

Arguably, police officers, as defenders of law and order, are uniquely
at risk and, hence, have a higher need for defensive weapons. Officers
on street patrol in high-crime neighborhoods, for example, face
substantially higher risks than most people do. Yet officers who
process paper, direct traffic, and who do not routinely engage in
dangerous missions or patrol violent neighborhoods are all allowed,
under the proposals favored by anti-gun groups, to possess any weapon
they want. These officers face no risk of attack greater than, and
sometimes substantially less than, the risks faced by people whom Gore
and anti-gun lobbyists would disarm, including the owners of gas
stations or grocery stores in crime-ridden neighborhoods, women who
are being threatened by ex-boyfriends, crime witnesses and jurors who
are at risk of retaliation from violent criminals, and elderly people
who have to walk through dangerous areas. A police sergeant who sits
in a building where every entrance is protected by several heavily
armed officers has much less personal risk of attack than a clerk who
works the night shift at a convenience store on the wrong side of
town.

Another argument for police exemption from gun-control laws is that
officers are trained and disciplined and, therefore, less likely to
abuse guns than regular citizens. It would be interesting to try that
argument on people in the Rampart neighborhood of Los Angeles, or the
many innocent people killed in no-knock drug raids, or the Branch
Davidians, or the New York City family of the late Patrick Dorismond.

As
reported in the Police Foundation's book Deadly Force: What We Know,
one study of 1,500 incidents concluded that police use of deadly force
was not justified in 40 percent of the cases and was questionable in
another 20 percent.

Whenever a New York City police officer fires a gun (outside of a
target range), police officials review the incident. About 20 percent
of discharges are accidental, and another 10 percent are intentional
violations of force policy. That means that only 70 percent of
firearms discharges by New York City police are intentional and in
compliance with force policy. In Philadelphia, accidents made up 27
percent of police firearms discharges; in Dade County, Florida, 31
percent were accidental.

According to research by criminologist Don Kates, when police shoot at
criminals, they are 5.5 times more likely to hit an innocent person
than are civilian shooters. This is partly because the police are more
likely to intervene in situations where they do not know the parties,
while defensive civilian shooters often know who the criminal is.

Not only are police misuses of firearms in the line of duty common,
but their off-duty misuse of guns is disturbingly frequent. When an
off-duty New York City policeman fires a gun, one time out of four the
shooting will be an accident, a suicide, or an act of frustration.

Finally, police officers do not necessarily receive extensive training
in the use of firearms. Some do, but many receive only a few dozen
hours at the police academy and may only be required to recertify
their ability to hit a target once every few years. A large number of
gun-carrying officers have not practiced marksmanship since they
received their firearms certification as a recruit.

The amount of training in defensive-gun use that police officers
undergo rarely exceeds that which a civilian could learn at a good
firearms-instruction academy. With the advent of inexpensive indoor
laser-target systems and high-technology video trainers for
"shoot-don't shoot" programs, and the proliferation of civilian
firearms schools, citizens can be educated in defensive firearms use
to at least the same level of competence as that required of police
officers in many jurisdictions.

The real basis for the double standard of Gore and the anti-gun groups
is neither logic nor sensible policy: It is the belief that government
employees are superior to the governed and, hence, deserve special
privileges. Yet the very purpose of the Second Amendment, as well as
the rest of the Constitution, is to prevent the emergence of the
privileged class that Gore wants to create.

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